MOOPs TV | Episode 7 | Anna Leary & Mike Rizzo Copy

Watch the episode or tune in on Ops Cast to find out what the mistakes were and how (if possible) they were resolved.

 

Transcript:

Episode 7 – Anna Leary

Mike Rizzo: [00:00:00] Ana, thank you so much for getting on to talk about a MOOPs moment that you had, or maybe two. And, um, prior to jumping on, it sounds like you have, uh, some, some history with this topic of MOOPs. And so I’m really excited to learn about you.

Anna Leary: I do. Thanks for having me excited to be talking about it. I make mistakes all the time.

Mike Rizzo: Don’t we all, I’m pretty sure I made one earlier today. So I would love to, let’s just kick things off. Tell us who you are and where you work and all of that fun stuff. Like how many years have you been practicing marketing ops and yeah, let’s talk, let’s

Anna Leary: learn about you. Yeah. So I’m Anna leery. I am currently.

Self-employed as a marketing ops and technology consultant. So I’ve been building my client base, which has been really fun for me too. For [00:01:00] clients that I like working with, I definitely prefer smaller business to mid-market and trying to help set people up for success. So that’s what I’ve been doing the past few months, which has been awesome.

I have been in marketing. I fell into it accidentally as most people seem to do since January, 2015. So is it 2021? Yeah. So over six years, I can’t keep the years straight. So yeah. Coming close on seven years in marketing. And I love it. I’m like such a nerd about maps.

Mike Rizzo: Oh yeah, me too. So you like, just real quickly, I’ve heard this question, especially coming off with summer camp, like you said, you fell into the role where you doing like sales ops or just general marketing before.

Anna Leary: Um, I actually have quite the interesting stories. So I had moved to Australia on a working holiday visa and I had no job when I got to Australia. I luckily found a how. With, um, some [00:02:00] mutual friends and found a job within a week of being there. But the stipulation of the visa is that you’re only allowed to work at one job for six months, and then you have to change your jobs.

So I was coming up on the six-month mark, because they don’t want, they don’t want you to stay. Essentially. Chile is when it comes down to, they don’t want you taking their jobs. So, um, I was looking for jobs. I was trying to get more. I actually wanted a career-based job. I didn’t want anything that was like, I worked in a juice shop for a little bit.

Oh, I was trying to find something that I could put on my resume. And so I ended up applying to this education company called Napa task-based in Brisbane. And I thought it was just going to be like managing social media and that kind of thing. And the first day on the job. My manager asked me, have you ever heard of Marketo?

And I said no. And she was like, okay, well you’re about to learn it. And the rest is history from there. I was sponsored to stay like, [00:03:00] stay in Australia for a little bit and moved back to the U.S. and my career has taken off since learning market. Really thankful for falling into it.

Mike Rizzo: That’s awesome. Oh, that’s great.

So you fell into the role. Um, you’ve been, you know, coming up on seven years here. Um, so at what point in that track record, did this mistake happen? Like, tee us up, were you early, mid, like further along,

Anna Leary: this is literally. Two months into that role at now, a task. And it’s funny, I think back on it and I’m actually still really close with my manager.

There she’s become like a big sister slash mentor. So we still talk pretty much every day. And I think back to that time of being like, given the keys to the castle like that at that time Navitus was one of the bigger Marketo instances in the entire world, because. This was before the time of enterprise-level companies kind of honing in on the B2B [00:04:00] marketing org.

And so at the time, you know, like student recruitment and that kind of thing led to like a huge database. So we’re talking, you know, 2 million people in this database managing 30 plus businesses. So being given the keys to this castle, I’m like, you really want me to press the button that says sinned, you want me to press the button that says activate like, no way

Mike Rizzo: it’s like on MailChimp, like the like sweaty monkey, paw that’s like

Anna Leary: totally.

Um, and so what happened was. I had to build all of these different student recruitment event programs in Marketo. And what I did was I just cleaned the old one that they had and I updated it. And this was like a really advanced one that we only had like one example to clone. And it was, it was for. A student recruitment of it in Bahrain.

So it had to be in Arabic, which was [00:05:00] also, you know, throwing another wrench into everything because you actually have to like, turn your landing pages and your emails so that it writes from right to left instead of left to. Right. And so I had cloned a Vietnamese template and little did I know that I didn’t update the.

And everything. And so tons of people were getting these Vietnamese autoresponders and I’m talking like high volume here. And I only realized it probably like three days after, because I was just going to look at something I needed to go look at something and not a responder email. And I, I saw that it was the Vietnamese email going out, and this was also linked to a partner event to.

You know, and student recruitment, there’s a lot of history there, but partner events are like really crucial to your business as well. And seeing this mistake, I remember just sitting at my desk, my manager literally [00:06:00] sat right next to me and I’m like, how do, how do I, what do I do? I’m like, are they going to send me back to the U.S. Now, are they done with me?

Because this had my visa writing on it. Like, I’m just like sweating bullets, like at my. It’s like probably looked like a deer in headlights pale as a ghost. Oh, I

Mike Rizzo: can only imagine.

Anna Leary: And I’m so new too. And so I’m like, yeah, they’re definitely done with me. And so I finally was like, I have to tell her and I looked over and I said, Hey, Tamara, um, do you mind coming over here really fast?

I need to show you something. And she, yeah. And she handled it like a freaking champ. Like this is when I knew that she had. The person that I needed to follow in terms of like a career and like have her as my mentor, because she was like, it’s okay, we’re just going to fix it. Like no big deal. And I was shocked, like being so young in your career.

I was probably 24. I have at the time. And [00:07:00] you know, you’re just sitting there thinking like, they’re definitely going to fire me as far to handle it. Yeah. And for her to handle it. So, well, I think that kind of helped shape, like knowing, Hey, she actually doesn’t think I did something like insanely wrong or she sees valid.

And be regardless of the mistakes that I made. And so knowing that I think that’s helped me with all the other mistakes I’ve made following that.

Mike Rizzo: Yeah. Cause they never seem to stop. Right. We all just keep making the sex. Um, yeah. I, and, and you like, that’s part of the journey, right? Like we’re learning, uh, and like if you haven’t made a mistake.

In many places in the community. Like if you haven’t made any mistakes, like you’re not that seasoned, right? Like, or you just happen to have like some really amazing process and admins that are controlling your every move,

Anna Leary: you must have some great QA,

Mike Rizzo: like it’s, it’s just, it’s rare. Right? Like we, HBO max made a mistake recently, come on.

Like everybody. [00:08:00]

Anna Leary: I know. Yeah. I love the most because it just reminds me everyone at every level makes mistakes. It doesn’t matter who you are.

Mike Rizzo: Yeah, absolutely. So what did y’all do to remedy that situation? Um, did you end up like acknowledging it or, or what happened?

Anna Leary: We acknowledged it and it’s hard to even, it’s really hard to remember, like the remedy of that, but yeah.

The process-wise that’s when program templates kind of came in to play, because then we’re saying, Hey, we’re going to have these kinds of events over and over and over again. Maybe we should have something that’s like bare bones, skeleton, and let’s just clone that. So we remember what we need to fill in rather than just cloning old programs.

And that was something that I talked about in my Adobe summit session. Last year was the importance of scalability and efficiency, because not only is it like helping with that, but it’s [00:09:00] helping you prevent these types of mistakes as well. Yeah,

Mike Rizzo: I think that’s like super key. Um, so when you think about like what you learned through like the remediation process of like, uh, You know, having this mistake happen and you’re trying to, you know, fix it and resolve and like talk to your clients or your prospects or whoever it is that you made this mistake with.

Um, it’s, it’s just like, it’s key to hone in on how to improve upon that in the future. And you know, just the people that I’ve talked to. I don’t know, like, I don’t know about you, but. Organizations that I’ve been in process sometimes as like a four-letter word. Right? Like people think of it as like, it’s not it’s, you know, stop you’re slowing me down, um, to your point, right?

Like it helps with scalability. It helps with efficiency. And like, if it’s a good process, like you can avoid costly mistakes or just embarrassing mistakes, you know, sometimes they’re just embarrassing.

Anna Leary: Yes. And I feel [00:10:00] like that has, is what has made me very. I that’s oriented in this, in this whole arena marketing operations, because, you know, I’m, I become like a really big stickler on process with clients.

Um, when I was in-house I was like, you have to submit it this way. You have to submit a ticket. You have to follow this process. You have to make sure you’re following the documentation. And it’s, I think it’s crucial to help, you know, you’re, you’re going to make mistakes regardless, but the huge ones can be missed if you actually kind of sit down and develop that process as well.

Mike Rizzo: So what’s up. That you have in place either for that type of, to, to avoid that specific mistake or these days. Um, are you doing like testing of any kind? Um, sounds like you’re interacting with lots of different clients. So, um, you’re doing like process documentation. Is that like your, your kind of bread and

Anna Leary: butter?

Yeah. Process, documentation and training. [00:11:00] Um, that’s kind of goes hand in hand with one another with clients, but I definitely I’m actually working with a client right now. Now with that. Um, I’m preaching the use of program templates, including them and things like that. And so, um, you know, making sure that we’re having some sort of process set up, so using program templates for webinars or anything that they’re going to be doing over and over again every month and then making sure there’s some sort of process.

And then QA is really important. You know, I know sometimes we have people that are a one person team. So it’s really hard to QA, but my recommendation there is put it in like a spreadsheet or something so that you can go take your eyes off of it for a little bit, and then go back later when you’re fresh and have another look just to make sure everything’s there that you need.

That’s another important tip.

Mike Rizzo: Um, that’s a really good tip. So just thinking through, um, you know, a couple of the last little questions that we’d like to ask [00:12:00] everybody who’s coming on, the moobs TV episodes is, um, what would you say to someone who is like making this mistake right now, or has made something similar?

Um, you know, like a piece of advice that you would.

Anna Leary: It’s not the end of the world and you most likely aren’t going to lose your job. And if you do, there’s another better job out there for you, especially

Mike Rizzo: right now. Right? Crazy. There’s so many opportunities these days, but

Anna Leary: also take it as a learning lesson.

Like that’s how, that’s how all of the seasoned, you know, experts in the marketing. I keep looking for the word. I keep wanting to say arena. I’m like looking for the word that keeps,

Mike Rizzo: I think mean there’s a great word. Like practice vocation.

Anna Leary: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Um, I think that making the. Is what helps shape the seasoned experts into having the knowledge that they have, because without that, you [00:13:00] don’t learn essentially.

And so just take it as a learning lesson. Like it’s not the end of the world and you will make more and just keep going

Mike Rizzo: and you will make so many more mistakes, but it’s okay. All right. Um, any other. Things you’d like to share maybe a shameless plug. Oh,

Anna Leary: um, shameless plug. Um, add me on LinkedIn. It’s just Anna leery on LinkedIn.

You’ll find me

Mike Rizzo: very good. Well, Anna, thank you very much for coming on and talking about your MOOCs, uh, you know, what your mistakes in marketing operations, and we appreciate learning with you.

Anna Leary:  Yeah. Totally. Thank you so much.